Showing results by publisher "Oakhill Publishing" in Family Life

The summer of 1939 broke the Maudsley family. Cecily was only 13 years old and desperate to grow up, desperate to be as desired and reckless as her older sister, Rose. Now in her 40s, the family resemblance is uncanny, but Cecily is a shadow of her former self. A part of her died that fateful summer. Returning to the deserted family farm, Cecily recalls the light before the storm, before the war came and before the terrible family tragedy. She remembers how everyone was guarding a secret.

Hildy Good has reached that dangerous time in a woman’s life – middle-aged and divorced, she is an oddity in her small but privileged town. But Hildy isn’t one for self-pity and instead meets the world with a wry smile, a dark wit and a glass or two of Pinot Noir. When her two earnest grown-up children stage ‘an intervention’ and pack Hildy off to an addiction centre, she thinks all this fuss is ridiculous. After all, why shouldn’t she enjoy a drink now and then? But we start to see another side to Hildy Good.

Bryony and Hannah are sisters, but they couldn't be more different, and war has brought even more of a rift between them. Bryony is happiest at Combe Lodge, the family home, while young, headstrong Hannah has fled to Jersey. At Combe Lodge, everyone else is pitching in with the war effort. The family home fills with evacuees, and Bryony is doing her bit, flying planes at the nearby Combe Lodge Airlines. But Bryony knows that she needs to reach out to Hannah. Only she will be able to keep her flighty younger sister's feet on the ground. But is Bryony too late to help her? Will Hannah ever come home?

Helen Cooper has a charmed life. She's beautiful, accomplished, organised - the star parent at the school. Until she disappears. But Helen wasn't abducted or murdered. She's chosen to walk away, abandoning her family, her husband, Sam, and her home. Where has Helen gone, and why? What has driven her from her seemingly perfect life? What is she looking for? Sam is tormented by these questions and gradually begins to lose his grip on work and his family life.

Surviving motherhood? It's all about having the right support network. Lawyer and new mum Cassie has a husband who converses through jokes, a best friend on the other side of the world, and a taskforce of Babycraft mothers who make her feel she has the maternal aptitude of a jellyfish. Husband Jonathan dismisses Cassie's maternal anxieties, but is he really paying attention? Then sexy ex-boyfriend Malkie saunters into Cassie's life again. He'd like to get her into bed again, too...

Jean seems the perfect wife and mother, but she struggles to love her daughters, whose material comforts mask emotional neglect. When the youngest daughter, Susan, brings 'shame' on the family, Jean can think of only one response. She has to make the problem disappear. Finding the strength to stand up to her mother for the first time in her life, Susan does the only thing that she can to save her baby. But what Susan doesn't realise is that her mother's emotional distance hides a dark secret of her own....

When Esther's childhood best friend, Isabella, dies of cancer, she is devastated. Years later she is brought together with Isabella's sister Sally, who cared for Isabella in her last days and who subsequently nursed their mother through years of dementia. English professor Esther sees shy, innocent Sally emerge from a life of isolation and loneliness. But as Esther herself suffers blow after blow and sees her carefully ordered life collapse around her, she is forced to contemplate the notion of friendship and trust.

The wedding of Thomas, an idealistic German architect, and Irene, an English artist, brings together the Curtius and Benson families. But their peace is soon shattered by the outbreak of war in Europe. While Irene struggles to survive in a country where she is the enemy, her sister, Sophia, faces the war as a nurse on the Western Front. For their brother, Mark, diplomatic service sees him moving between London, Washington and Copenahagen, all the while struggling to confront his own identity.

Sisters Ella and Roberta O’Callaghan live in separate wings of their crumbling Irish mansion. They haven’t spoken for decades, torn apart by a dark family secret from their past, and communicate only through the terse notes they leave for each other in the hallway. Debbie, an American, is searching for her birth mother, hoping to discover who she really is and what happened to her. With the bank threatening, Ella tries to save the family home by opening a café in the ballroom, much to Roberta’s disgust.

July 1942, and 23-year-old nightclub singer Kate Watson has made a home for herself in bomb-blitzed London. A motley crew of friends has replaced the family she's not spoken to in years. Until Kate's sister Sarah walks back into her life, asking her to return home to Dorset for one month to look after her daughter, Lizzie. Reluctantly Kate agrees, though it means facing the troubled past she hoped she'd escaped.

Chrissie loves London, her job as an events manager and her daughters Scarlet (loud, vegan, activist) and Ruby (quiet, musician, boffin). She even loves her husband, Rob, despite him deciding to cycle across Africa. For a year. But Chrissie is stressed and overworked, so when her mum calls her home to Devon to help with the struggling family vineyard, she is almost relieved. Chrissie gives herself a year: if she can make it until then, maybe they can celebrate as a family with their own fizz? But adjusting to West Country life takes more than she bargained for....

Genealogist Freya Cameron has the perfect life. A devoted husband of nearly 30 years and career-driven, successful twin daughters. But what if it's all a lie? So skilled at excavating her clients' family histories, Freya has no idea her family are so cold towards her - but they know something she doesn't and are determined to make her pay for it.

When Elizabeth Price engages private detective Roland ‘Orlando’ Gibbons to find out the truth about her husband’s suspected affair, she unwittingly sets off a chain of correspondence that reunites four formerly close-knit couples. They all live just a few suburban streets away from each other, they are all still married, so how – and why – did they become so estranged? In a series of letters, each protagonist is far more self-revealing than they would ever be in person.

Twelve-year-old Bobby Nusku catalogues traces of his mother’s life and waits for her to return home. Bobby thinks that he’s been left to face the world alone until he meets lonely single mother Val and her daughter, Rosa. They spend a magical summer together, discovering the books in the mobile library where Val works as a cleaner. But as the summer draws to a close, Bobby finds himself in trouble, and Val is in danger of losing her job. There’s only one thing to do - and so they take to the road in the mobile library.

When Tess finds herself unexpectedly alone and back in Ribblemill, the childhood village she thought she'd escaped, she's sure she can survive a temporary stay. Determined to throw herself into village life, Tess starts a choir and gathers a team of volunteers to restore the walled garden at Ramblings, the local stately home. Everything could be perfect, if she weren't sharing a cottage and a cat with prickly Noah.... As winter approaches, Tess finds herself putting down her own roots as fast as she's pulling them up in the garden. But the ghosts of her past hover close by....

Philippa Smith is in her forties and has a beautiful newborn baby girl. She also has no husband, and nowhere to turn. So she turns to the only place she knows: the beginning. Retracing her life, she confronts the daily obstacles that shaped her very existence. From the tragic events of her childhood abandonment, to the astonishing accomplishments of those close to her, Philippa learns of the sacrifices others chose to make, and the outcome of buried secrets.

Fourteenth century England.The country is in turmoil.The King is in debt to the City,and the old order had broken down.The King's mistress,Alice Perrers,becomes the virtual ruler of the country. Dislaked and despised by the Black Prince, her strong connections to the merchants make her a natural ally for the King's ambitious second son,John of Gaunt. Together, they create a powerfull position for one of his henchmen, Geoffrey Chaucer.

No one in Carniskey has ever understood what led local fisherman Sean Delaney to risk his life in a high storm in the dead of night. Three years on from that tragic night, his wife, Alison, is struggling with grief and increasing financial worries. She has grown distant from her daughter and estranged from her friends and fellow villagers, particularly her best friend, Kathleen, who harbours a secret of her own. But the arrival of an outsider artist and lifelong nomad, William, offers Alison a new perspective on life and love that threatens to unearth the mysteries of the past.

Cameron Spark's life is falling apart. He is separated from his wife and has moved in with his widowed dad. Then he receives a letter. It is from Christie. Twenty-five years earlier, the shy Cameron attended university where he made three unlikely friends: Christie, the rich Canadian; Tommo, the wannabe rock star; and Bex, the feminist activist.

Violet Dimond, the Holy Terror, has delivered many of the town children in her capacity as handywoman. But Violet’s calling is dying out with medicine’s advances. Grace, Violet’s adopted daughter, is a symbol of change herself. In the place where she has grown up and everyone knows her, she is accepted, though most of the locals never before saw a girl with skin that colour. For Violet and Grace the coming war will bring more upheaval: can they endure it, or will they be swept aside by history’s tide?